Test taken: Thinking Skills Assessment (TSA)
Number of interviews: 3
Time between interviews: between interviews 1 and 2 I had almost a full day and then between 2 and 3 about 3 hours
Length of interviews: Around 20 minutes
Online interview: No

Inorganic - we spoke about Born-Haber energy cycles which were in my A level course and talking through each process around the cycle e.g. formation enthalpy, lattice enthalpy etc and whether it’s always endo or exothermic or if it depends on the lattice and then compared every process in the cycle for two different ionic compounds and which was more endo/exothermic for each process. Asked me to draw Lewis structures for several molecules and had a few questions surrounding that.

Organic - was asked to draw as many isomers I could think of for an organic compound and they stopped me early and we focused on one in particular which had a chiral centre. They told me it undergoes two reactions depending on the conditions one which produces only one enantiomer and the other which produces a mixture of both and asked me to suggest the two mechanisms (we had never studied these so they weren’t expecting it to be perfect at all). They then asked me to try and explain why one produces the mixture and the other not and how you could tell which is which.

Physical - this interview was an introduction to quantum mechanics - something I knew very little about so was quite nerve-wracking when they said that was what we would be talking about but they very much guided me through and entailed lots of graph sketching (so definitely revise that beforehand). Essentially I ended up sketching a p - orbital and they asked me a bit about what I had drawn and kind of just rationalising it through how we got to that result etc and how we could change this from a px to a py or pz orbital.

I revised a bit of A level content, went through my personal statement and read a bit more in-depth on anything I had mentioned to refresh my memory. I made some (not very extensive) notes/prompts on these things and revision things that were most tricky to read over just before the actual interviews. I had 2 mock interviews which were really useful to get used to the style of interviews so that isn’t another thing to add to the stress in the moment. I practised a few common questions I found on the internet and how I’d explain my thinking out loud such as estimate how many H2O molecules are there in a glass of water or draw dot diagrams of certain molecules. Graph sketching is very useful to revise.

Some practice papers and other practice questions timed and non-timed. Went through what each type of question was asking and the set key words in the questions which they always ask, also common mistakes you can find all this online.

Definitely don’t rush your answers, just remember they are expecting and hoping that you will think about the questions and often times it is very useful to speak your thoughts even if they are very primitive as they can often be just as impressive as the answer itself even if they don’t seem it. They want to see you give it a go even if you have no idea to begin with so try to avoid just saying you have no idea and not attempting it. Also remember they design the questions to stretch you so they don’t expect you to know the answers they want to see how far you can get or what you think of when posed with the question. Also try not to get flustered if they interrupt you to try and help or guide you in a different direction or change topic or question - it doesn’t mean you went wrong or that you’ve failed or anything like that (I’ve heard some rumours that this is the case but it’s not).